Cuenca and our first South American bus ride!
Our time in the Galapagos has ended so off to Cuenca (pronounced: Qwank a). We have a nice 3-bedroom, 2-bath apartment just off Old Town in a residential area that should be fairly quiet. The only exception is that this week is Carnival, and music is everywhere, really loud music! AND, here in Ecuador, Carnival is celebrated for a week with music, food, concerts, partying, and spraying everyone with either water or spray foam, like shaving cream only in massive pressurized containers! That wasn’t in the brochure! Good thing I let the little woman go first, always the gentleman.
This was our first long distance bus ride and it wasn’t too bad. Getting through the bus station in Guayaquil was a challenge, tons of people, but we managed to find booth 51 to purchase our tickets. There was a pretty long line and we soon started wondering if we would make the bus for today. Didn’t plan on this many people going to Cuenca. But we were lucky, got tickets for the 3:48pm bus, all was good. Now we just had to find where platform 87 was in this 3-story terminal.
Just hang’n in the bus station…
Everyone wants to go to Cuenca!
Made the bus with a little time to spare so grabbed a water and bag of homemade potato chips for the ride. The seats were ok, not something I’d like to sit on for a real long ride but comfortable enough for the 3.5hr ride to Cuenca. They also had a tv just above our head that was playing an American movie dubbed in Spanish, and of course the volume had to be up so the first 10 rows could hear it. Ugh!
The door inside the bus. How could you not feel safe?
We arrived late in the evening and found a taxi to the apartment. With very limited Spanish and a driver with no English, we did manage to make it to the neighborhood. Had some difficulty finding the apartment complex using our hosts directions, building 2-54y. Neither the taxi driver, the neighborhood watch lady or me and the wife could find, 2-54y anywhere. Finally called the host and he asked if we were in front of the building with “Orion Condominiums” on the entry. We found Orion Condominiums and low and behold, the keys worked. Why he didn’t just start with those instructions is beyond me, but we found it.
Living & dining room
Dining & kitchen
Master bedroom (there were 3 bedrooms total)
As I said, this is Carnival so there was a concert celebration going on down the street. Pretty loud but not that bad in the apartment. We decided to walk to the market ad get breakfast makings before calling it a night. Tons of people were out trying the street food, listening to music and just hanging out. Very safe, no worries about being hassled or people begging money. There was a concern though. Water and foam! The tradition here for Carnival is to spray people with water, everyone! Since there has been a drought in last few years, someone got the bright idea to use spray foam instead of water. Harmless really, but it can be a bit messy. Kids and adults were all running around the streets foaming everyone they saw. It looked like a massive Gillette commercial! Fortunately for us, they tend to leave older people and Americans out of the celebration. Broke my heart.
Grabbed our groceries (the bill came to about the same as you would pay in the US, after all, they use the US dollar for their currency) then headed back to the apartment for some rest. Tomorrow, we have a tour to Ingapirca, the Inca ruins dating back to late 15th century and considered the largest archeological Inca complex in Ecuador. But for now…sleep!